[Commlist] Media, Sport and Ireland Symposium 2022: Call for Papers

Media, Sport and Ireland Symposium 2022: Call for Papers

The Media, Sport and Ireland International Symposium will take place on 
*19 May 2022* at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway. Organised by the Sport 
& Exercise Research Group, NUIG in association with the Department of 
Media and Communication Studies, Mary Immaculate College, the submission 
of papers is now being invited with a deadline of 14 January 2022.

Sport occupies a central position in Irish social and cultural life, yet 
a relatively marginal position within the academy. This symposium aims 
to bring together sports scholars from across the humanities and social 
sciences whose work is variously concerned with the contemporary and 
historical cultural significance of sport, and which deals with the 
interplay between sport, the media and cultural industries and the lived 
experience of sport as popular culture in Ireland and across the Irish 
diaspora. Building on the success of the ‘Sport, Media and the Cultural 
Industries in Ireland’ symposium, hosted in Dublin City University in 
2018, and the subsequent collection /Sport, the Media and Ireland: 
Interdisciplinary Perspectives/ (edited by Neil O’Boyle and Marcus 
Free), it is hoped that this symposium will become a vehicle for 
establishing a distinct national research network in Ireland north and 
south. It is intended that the symposium will lead to the publication of 
a dedicated journal issue and/or collection that will create and inspire 
further dialogue between researchers working in various disciplines, 
including, but not exclusively, media, communication and cultural 
studies, film studies, sociology, gender studies, sport science and 
physical education, history, geography and politics. In addition to 
examining the current ‘state of play’ of Irish themed sports research, 
the symposium and projected volume aim to reflect on the interrelations 
of sport, the media and cultural industries in order to identify 
historical continuities and changes, and both shared transnational 
patterns and national/local specificities.

Our intention is to host the symposium as a blended event that will 
combine presentations on campus in NUI Galway and presentations online. 
However, please note that this arrangement may be impacted by local and 
national Covid-19 restrictions. If it is not possible to host papers in 
person on campus, the symposium will take place entirely online.

Regarding the impact of the media and cultural industries on sport, the 
following thematic strands may be of particular interest to potential 
contributors, but this is not a comprehensive list.

Hutchins and Rowe (2009) use the term ‘media sport content economy’ to 
describe the recent shift that has taken place in the transmission of 
sports content, from a context of television dominance to a more complex 
multimedia environment characterised by digital plenitude. In practice, 
this term suggests that sports scholars must be attentive to how the 
rise of digital technologies – such as social media and video-hosting 
sites like YouTube – are impacting traditional sports coverage and 
commentary as it unfolds ‘live’ and as it is re-mediated through these 
platforms. These developments have greatly impacted how sport is played, 
made, consumed and enjoyed, but they also raise questions for a variety 
of other fields. For example, what are the implications of media-sport 
intersections for politics, religion and tourism in the Irish context? 
How are Irish media sports texts (news reports, advertisements, 
sponsorship campaigns, etc.) shaped by the industrial contexts they 
emerge from? What is the relationship between sport, tourism and 
destination marketing in Ireland? What is the impact of these 
developments on constructions and negotiations of various forms of 
collective identity?

A second related international development is the extended variety of 
commodification of sport, from sponsorship of clubs and national teams 
to forms of advertising and marketing, to individual sports 
personalities as ‘brand ambassadors’ for corporate organisations. How 
are constructions of ‘Irishness’ mobilised in the promotion of ‘native’ 
and transnational brands, and how does the intersection with the 
corporate world relate to media and cultural narratives of the changes 
taking place within the island of Ireland and across the Irish diaspora 
in the early 21st century? How does ‘Irishness’ intersect with 
constructions of gender, region and locality in the resulting media and 
cultural texts?

An important feature of the /Sport, the Media and Ireland /volume was a 
section focusing on both the underrepresentation and the quality of 
representation of women’s sports in Ireland, and on the experiences of 
female journalists in Irish media. 2020 was to be a landmark year in 
Irish sports media following the 20x20 campaign to increase 
participation in, and media coverage of women’s sports in Ireland by 
20%. However these aims were adversely impacted by the cancellation of 
events during the Covid-19 pandemic when gender inequalities in Irish 
sport, both economically and in cultural status, were repeatedly exposed 
by the uneven experiences of men’s and women’s sports organisations and 
athletes. Nonetheless a significant recent development in Irish sports 
media has been a concern with the gender politics of sports 
organisation, governance, economic underpinnings and cultural 
representation, with many critical interventions led by female sports 
journalists. The 20x20 campaign has arguably played a key role in 
raising awareness of the issues at stake in women’s and girls’ sports 
participation and representation. Contributions are invited that explore 
these and related gender (including LGBTQ+) issues in Irish sports 
media, and the cultural and social contexts in which sport and sports 
media are variously discussed, negotiated and contested.

The Covid-19 pandemic negatively impacted, and indeed threatened the 
very viability of some sports, including, in an Irish context, both 
professional sports dependent on mass spectatorship, sponsorship and/or 
television coverage, and predominantly or exclusively amateur sports 
with weaker financial resources. Research has been growing 
internationally, since 2020, on the current and likely future impact of 
the pandemic on sport, but less so on how sports media responded to the 
absence of sporting events, and how it covered the economic and cultural 
impact on various sports. We invite papers that address these issues in 
an Irish or Irish diasporic context.

The final section of /Sport, the Media and Ireland /dealt with 
Irish-British dimensions of sport and sports media, from the presence of 
Irish athletes within British sport to the consumption of Irish media in 
Britain, and of British media in Ireland. In addition to welcoming 
papers that extend such cross-border themes in an Irish-British and 
north-south context, or that explore ‘Irish’ dimensions of sports media 
circulation within a more transnational context, we also welcome work 
that concerns the ways in which Irish and international sports media 
have engaged with the increasingly complex migration flows in Irish 
sport as indexical of social and cultural changes in 21st century 
Ireland. How, for instance, have athletes of immigrant origin or 
parentage been represented in Irish media and social media? How has the 
international impact of the Black Lives Matter protests been manifested 
in Irish sports and related media?

As noted, this is a suggested, but not exclusive range of themes as we 
seek to both establish a network of scholars with related interests and 
to encourage expansion in the range of research avenues in this field. 
We especially encourage the participation of early career researchers 
with any of these or related interests across a wide range of disciplines.

Abstracts (250-300 words) should be submitted to the following email 
address by 14 January 14th 2022: (MSINUIG2022 /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(MSINUIG2022 /at/ gmail.com)>

Please also include contact details, institutional affiliation and a 
short biographical note (50-100 words).

/Organising Committee:/

  * Dr Seán Crosson, NUI Galway
  * Dr Marcus Free, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
  * Dr Niamh Kitching, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
  * Dr Katie Liston, University of Ulster
  *
    Dr Neil O’Boyle, Dublin City University

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